1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a seat occupant identifying apparatus designed to identify whether a seat occupant is an over-specified size passenger (e.g., an adult) or an under-specified size passenger (e.g., a child), and more particularly to a seat occupant identifying apparatus designed to achieve such identification correctly when a seat occupant physically leans, for example, during cornering, thus resulting in a shift in weight load on a seat.
2. Background Art
EP 0 990 565 A1 discloses an automotive airbag system designed to identify a vehicle occupant (i.e., an adult or a child) using all outputs of a plurality of sensors to control the amount of gas for deploying an airbag. A seat made up of a seat back and a seat cushion is mounted on a vehicle body member through a seat adjuster, rails, and rail mount brackets. The sensors are installed between the rails and the rail mount brackets.
When the seat is occupied by an adult, cornering of the vehicle may cause the total output W of the sensors to have a level lower than an adult identifying threshold value WTH. In order to avoid an instantaneous change in system decision about the identification of the occupant during the cornering, the system has a decision delay time TH (see FIG. 7).
Additionally, the cornering of the vehicle will cause a lateral G-force to act on the occupant, so that the body of the occupant is urged against a side door of the vehicle, which may result in an error in identifying the occupant. When a cornering duration becomes long, for example, during traveling on a mountain road or a ramp, it may result in an error in identifying the occupant after time t3, as illustrated in FIG. 7.